Having heard the representatives of railway organizations, organizations of water transport, representatives of workers from metallurgical factories and the trade union of railway workers – having heard the proposal of these comrades to permit their organizations, "Prodputi," "Prodvoda," and so forth, independent procurement operations,

the Council of People's Commissars urgently draws the attention of all organized, conscious, and thinking workers and toiling peasants to the glaring unreasonableness of such proposals. It is clear to everyone that by permitting separate independent procurements for "Prodputi," "Prodvoda," "Prodmetall," "Prodrezina," and the like, we would completely destroy the entire food supply organization, demolish any state organization of workers and the poorest peasants, and would fully clear the path to victory for the kulaks and Skoropadskys.

All workers and hungry peasants must understand that only through common efforts, dispatching hundreds and thousands of the best workers to common food procurement detachments, only by mobilizing the unified, merged, common, mass forces of workers for the struggle for order, for the struggle for bread, can we defeat hunger, defeat disorder, defeat speculators and kulaks.

It is madness to believe those who ask for independent procurements for "Prodputi," for "Prodvoda," not thinking that in each district of non-agricultural provinces there are tens and hundreds of thousands of hungry peasants who have not received bread at all for months.

Is this not a collapse, if each district of peasants is to be given separate procurements? Is it fair to give "Prodputi," as it requests, 60 million for independent procurements, while not giving tens of millions to each starving district, not giving it independent procurements?

Each railway workshop, each thousand employees or water workers or factory workers must field a detachment of the best and most reliable people, so that through joint, common efforts they may help the common workers' and common peasants' cause of salvation from hunger, of victory over hunger.

Separate, independent procurements – the ruin of the entire food supply organization, the ruin of the revolution, collapse and disintegration.

The provision by each thousand employees and workers of the best and devoted people for detachments to constitute a common workers' fighting force for the establishment of order, for assistance in oversight, for the collection of all surplus grain, for complete victory over speculators – only in this lies salvation.

Written May 29, 1918

First printed in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVIII

Printed from manuscripts